Top Science News

September 2, 2026

Top Headlines

“Broken Heart Syndrome” Can Look Just Like a Heart Attack. This Test Can Tell Them Apart

Sep. 2, 2026 “Broken heart syndrome” can mimic a heart attack so closely that patients often need invasive testing to tell the difference. Researchers have now developed the BioTAK score, which combines ...

Interstellar Solar Sails Hit a Strange Problem at 75% of Light Speed

Sep. 2, 2026 Solar sails pushed by powerful lasers could reach incredible speeds, but relativity may eventually make the light itself work against them. At around 75% of the speed of light, scattered photons can begin creating drag, adding a surprising obstacle ...

Money Problems May Age Your Brain Faster

Sep. 2, 2026 Persistent financial hardship in early and middle adulthood was linked to poorer thinking skills by the 50s and more signs of brain aging later in life. Researchers say years of chronic stress and financial worry may gradually take a toll on the ...

Alzheimer’s May Leave a Mark on the Brain Long Before Plaques Appear

Sep. 2, 2026 Brain changes associated with Alzheimer’s may begin at least seven years before amyloid plaques become detectable with current PET scans. Researchers uncovered the signal by tracking healthy older adults with repeated brain imaging over nearly 20 ...

A Coffee-table-size Scorpion Roamed Earth Before Forests Existed

Sep. 2, 2026 A meter-long scorpion with massive pincers stalked ancient Britain 415 million years ago, long before forests and the better-known age of giant insects. Its surprising size and possible semi-aquatic lifestyle could reshape ideas about how early ...

Too Much Coffee May Weaken Bones, Study Finds

Sep. 2, 2026 Following nearly 10,000 older women for 10 years, researchers found that tea drinking was associated with slightly higher hip bone density. Moderate coffee consumption did not appear harmful, but drinking more than five cups a day was linked to ...

A Search for One Exotic Particle Uncovered Two Strange New Structures

Sep. 2, 2026 A search for one mysterious particle unexpectedly revealed evidence for two different structures that may belong to the bizarre family of exotic subatomic particles known as XYZ states. The findings could help physicists uncover new ways that quarks ...

Earth May Have Lost the Sun’s Protective Shield Millions of Years Ago

Sep. 2, 2026 NASA-funded studies suggest Earth’s climate has been influenced by both the Sun’s travels through dense regions of the Milky Way and the violent superflares of its youth. Those events may help explain ancient ice ages as well as how early Earth ...

Your Neighborhood in Your 20s May Shape Your Heart Decades Later

Sep. 1, 2026 Where you live in early adulthood may quietly shape your heart health for decades. Researchers found that adverse neighborhood conditions were linked to a higher risk of coronary artery calcification in midlife, an early warning sign of ...

Obesity Leaves a Lasting Memory in Immune Cells

Sep. 1, 2026 Obesity appears to leave a molecular imprint on key immune cells that may persist for 5 to 10 years after weight loss. This long-lasting “obesity memory” could help explain why some obesity-related health risks remain elevated even after body ...

Mindfulness May Lower Blood Pressure in Just 8 Weeks

Sep. 1, 2026 Mindfulness, gratitude, and optimism training may improve blood pressure, inflammation, and other heart-health measures within just eight to 12 weeks. The strongest programs paired daily practice with regular reinforcement, suggesting that improving ...

Scientists Discover Why Snake Embryos Twist Into Spirals

Sep. 1, 2026 Snake embryos begin life curled into a distinctive right-handed spiral, and scientists may finally know why. Their bodies grow faster than their guts, creating a tether that forces the lengthening embryo to buckle and twist inside the egg. ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:04am EDT

Reaching 90 Without Dementia Doesn’t Mean You’re in the Clear

Sep. 1, 2026 A study of people over 90 found that dementia risk remains strongly shaped by sex, race and genetics, with women and black participants facing notably higher risks. Intriguingly, some people stayed ...

NASA’s Swift Telescope Is Back, but Time Is Running out

Sep. 1, 2026 NASA has brought two of Swift’s telescopes back online after technical problems derailed a commercial mission intended to rescue the aging observatory by raising its orbit. With atmospheric drag ...

NASA Delays Crew-13 Launch After Leak Found on SpaceX Dragon

Sep. 1, 2026 NASA and SpaceX have delayed Crew-13 after finding an oxidizer leak in the Dragon spacecraft’s propulsion system during prelaunch preparations. Engineers are investigating the problem before the ...

Scientists Find a Human-Only Gene That May Help Explain Our Brainpower

Aug. 31, 2026 Scientists discovered that human microglia, immune cells that help shape developing brain circuits, can take four to eight years to mature instead of just weeks as they do in mice. The unusually slow ...

Aug. 31, 2026 Two widely used zero-calorie sweeteners, sucralose and stevia, may have effects that linger far longer than the sweet taste itself. In mice, researchers found that both sweeteners altered the gut ...

Scientists Discover Two Superconducting States Hiding as One

Aug. 31, 2026 Scientists have uncovered hidden complexity inside two ultrathin superconductors that seemed much simpler than they really are. Niobium diselenide and tantalum disulfide appeared to have a single ...

Scientists Challenge a 70-Year-Old “lizard Brain” Myth

Aug. 31, 2026 A long-standing picture of brain evolution as newer, rational layers stacked on top of an ancient “lizard brain” may be deeply misleading. Researchers found that evolution instead appears to ...

Fossil Feet May Be Misleading Scientists About Human Evolution

Aug. 31, 2026 Wild monkeys in West Africa can climb vertical tree trunks using foot flexibility scientists did not realize they possessed. The discovery challenges a key assumption about what the last common ...

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Launches to Reveal the Universe’s Darkest Secrets

Aug. 31, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope has launched on a million mile journey to L2, where it will scan huge portions of the cosmos for clues about dark ...

Rocky Planets May Have Formed Just 100 Million Years After the Big Bang

Aug. 31, 2026 Rocky planets may have been able to start forming just 100 million years after the Big Bang, thanks to enormous early supernovae that scattered planet-building elements across space. Simulations ...

A Cancer Therapy Put Severe Rheumatoid Arthritis Into Remission

Aug. 29, 2026 CAR T-cell therapy dramatically reduced disease activity in six people with severe rheumatoid arthritis that had resisted other treatments, with three achieving medication-free remission. The ...

Scientists Discover a Massive Heat Anomaly Deep Inside Mars

Aug. 30, 2026 Mars has a hidden temperature divide, with its southern interior potentially hundreds of degrees hotter than the north and partially molten. The discovery could help explain several long-standing ...

NASA’s Roman Telescope Will See 100 Times More Sky Than Hubble

Aug. 28, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will combine Hubble-like detail with a field of view 100 times larger, giving astronomers a sweeping new way to explore the cosmos. Its observations could uncover ...

Why Scientists Asked 1,000 People to Bury Their Underwear

Aug. 28, 2026 More than 1,000 volunteers buried cotton underwear across Switzerland to help scientists measure how active different soils are. The faster the fabric disappeared, the more biological activity was ...

Scientists Find a Huge Hidden Ice Reservoir Beneath Utah’s Mountains

Aug. 27, 2026 Beneath the rocky slopes of Mount Timpanogos lies far more ice than anyone walking across the surface might suspect. Researchers used gravity measurements to map the buried glacier in 3D and found it ...

324-Million-Year-Old Fossil Reveals How Insects Conquered Land

Aug. 27, 2026 Ancient fossils suggest insects conquered land through a long amphibious phase rather than making an abrupt jump from water to dry ground. A newly identified 324-million-year-old species still ...

AI Searched 100 Million Possibilities and Found a Cheaper Way to 3D-Print a NASA Rocket Alloy

Aug. 27, 2026 Researchers used AI to search through more than 100 million possible settings for 3D-printing a high-performance NASA alloy. After only 40 experiments, the system identified six successful ...

NASA’s Roman Space Telescope Is Ready to Hunt Thousands of Alien Worlds

Aug. 26, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope is now enclosed inside its Falcon Heavy fairing and nearly ready for launch. Its mission could uncover thousands of exoplanets while helping scientists investigate dark ...

Bird Flu Is Spreading. Your Backyard Feeder Could Make It Worse

Aug. 24, 2026 Backyard bird feeders could become unexpected hotspots for H5N1 as Australia’s bird flu outbreak spreads, bringing species together in ways that rarely occur naturally. Experts say stopping feeding ...

Scientists May Have Finally Caught “empty” Space Changing Light

Aug. 26, 2026 A magnetar with an astonishingly powerful magnetic field may have revealed a quantum effect predicted by Werner Heisenberg nearly 90 years ago. Its light shows signs that supposedly empty space is ...

NASA Is About to Launch a Powerful New Eye on the Universe

Aug. 24, 2026 NASA’s Roman Space Telescope has been cleared for final launch preparations ahead of a targeted August 30 liftoff aboard SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy. The powerful new observatory will probe cosmic ...

Trump to Award Congressional Space Medal of Honor to Artemis II Astronauts

Aug. 24, 2026 The Artemis II crew will receive the Congressional Space Medal of Honor after becoming the first humans in more than 50 years to travel beyond the Moon. Their 10-day Orion mission also carried them ...

Depression May Shut Down the Brain’s Ability to Make New Neurons

Aug. 25, 2026 A major study found that adults with depression show disrupted production of new neurons in the hippocampus, potentially weakening the brain’s ability to separate new experiences from painful ...

Experimental Compound Helps Burn Fat Without Muscle Loss

Aug. 23, 2026 A decades-old compound may point to a new way of treating obesity by making the body burn more energy rather than simply reducing appetite. In mice, TOFA increased energy use by as much as 18%, ...

A Hidden “on Switch” in Human DNA Has Finally Been Decoded

Aug. 23, 2026 Researchers have used AI to uncover the DNA signature of a key genetic “switch” involved in turning genes on. After analyzing about 500,000 DNA sequences, the model identified the initiator in ...

JWST Finds Early Galaxies May Be 4 Times More Massive Than Thought

Aug. 22, 2026 Astronomers using JWST have discovered that massive early galaxies contain far more small, faint stars than expected. That hidden population could make some of these galaxies three to four times more ...

Scientists Find Hidden “highways” Guiding Animal Evolution

Aug. 25, 2026 A sweeping analysis of thousands of animal genomes suggests that chromosomes do not evolve randomly but instead follow a limited number of irreversible “evolutionary highways.” These one-way ...

Physicists Create a Tiny “Big Bang” With Surprisingly Small Atomic Nuclei

Aug. 23, 2026 Researchers at CERN have created microscopic versions of the early Universe by colliding surprisingly small atomic nuclei at nearly the speed of light. The collisions produced quark-gluon plasma, the ...

Black Holes Keep Tearing These Stars Apart, but They Survive

Aug. 23, 2026 Astronomers have found stars that repeatedly skim past supermassive black holes, surviving each encounter while producing a new burst of light. In some systems, those flares mysteriously fade with ...

A Mysterious Cosmic Hum May Come from 13-Billion-Year-Old Dark Stars

Aug. 27, 2026 Today’s mysterious gravitational-wave background may preserve clues about how the Universe’s first supermassive black holes formed. Descendants of hypothetical Dark Stars could be responsible for ...